The ability for healthcare users to interact with a hospital information system while at the point of care (POC), e.g., at a patient's bedside, is recognized as having the potential to dramatically reduce the incidence of certain medical complications. Specifically, studies estimate that significant benefits are likely to arise through the provision of “computerized physician order entry” (CPOE), which consists of allowing healthcare users (e.g., doctors, nurses, orderlies) to place orders (e.g., prescription, blood test, clean towel, etc.) via a bedside location in the vicinity of the patient being treated. This simple yet elusive paradigm, dubbed “CPOE at the POC”, has the potential effect of reducing human error due to temporary memory loss and mistakes in transcription. In addition, when coupled with real-time decision information support tools (DIST), CPOE provides healthcare users with an additional level of assurance that their diagnosis or treatment plan falls within generally accepted parameters.
For background reading on the CPOE-at-the-POC paradigm and its predicted impact, the reader is referred to the following references, hereby incorporated by reference herein:                Clinical Decision Support—Finding the Right Path, by J. Metzger, D. Stablein and F. Turisco, First Consulting Group, September 2002        Computerized Physician Order Entry: Costs, Benefits and Challenges—A case Study Approach, by First Consulting Group for Advancing Health in America and the Federation of American Hospitals, January 2003        Leapfrog Patient Safety Standards—The Potential Benefits of Universal Adoption, by J. D. Birkmeyer, The Leapfrog Group, November 2000        Computerized Physician Order Entry: A Look at the Vendor Marketplace and Getting Started, by J. Metzger, F. Turisco, First Consulting Group, December 2001        A Primer on Physician Order Entry, by First Consulting Group for the California Healthcare Foundation, Oakland, Calif., September 2000        
A typical example of a conventional CPOE-at-the-POC solution consists of a plurality of CPOE terminals with associated clinical software residing on those terminals, and which can access, read and input directly into the hospital information system infrastructure. All required healthcare information is downloaded to the terminal and written to the hard drive for use by the applications that are resident in the terminal. The terminals have gated access via an authentication, authorization and accounting (AAA) solution, based upon centralized authentication of user identity and authorization of that user to specific sets of privileges. By virtue of the fact that all of the healthcare applications are resident in the terminal, the terminal is typically to be a powerful workstation or personal computer (PC).
It is a reality, however, that healthcare institutions have neither sufficient funds nor adequate physical space to deploy customized CPOE terminals based on powerful processors, and containing healthcare applications and healthcare data for each patient at that patient's bedside. Recognizing that television terminals delivering patient entertainment services are to be found in virtually every patient room, and that TV display technology and PC display technology and image processing are in many cases converging, it has been proposed to make healthcare applications such as CPOE accessible to healthcare users via the same terminal that supplies the patient entertainment services. Thus, terminals and software have been developed, which allow both healthcare communications services and non-healthcare communications services to be accessed via a common user interface, albeit with significantly different authentication metrics.
One approach to reducing the requirement to deploy separate CPOE terminals lies in combining the healthcare and non-healthcare data delivery infrastructures at a common terminal. Some current systems which have adopted this approach provide healthcare applications (such as CPOE) for healthcare users, as well as health information, hospital information and entertainment/communication for non-healthcare users, via a common terminal and interface being fed by two underlying delivery infrastructures.
A problem with such conventional approaches is the lack of security arising from the dual-purpose nature of the common terminal. In particular, there exists the potential threat of a patient or outsider downloading so-called spyware (i.e., malicious software), AAA message collection software or other system-penetration software via non-healthcare sources (such as the Internet), and using the software so downloaded to attack the security or operation of the healthcare applications in the hospital information system. Clearly, this is a major consideration in the overall clinical system security and affects the degree to which healthcare providers will approve of delivering both healthcare and non-healthcare communications services to a common delivery point. With tens of millions of patients being admitted to U.S. hospitals on an in-patient basis every year, the number of “bored hackers” given access to such a system could be quite high, assuming even a modest proliferation of the combined delivery architecture. The impact of a successful penetration of a healthcare resources by a malcontent patient, with or without the aid of the Internet, may potentially put hospital efficiency and patient lives at risk, as well as expose the hospital to the risk of major lawsuits and/or public embarrassment.
Thus, there remains a need in the healthcare industry for preventing an attack on healthcare data processing resources in a hospital information system, thereby thwarting malicious attempts at hacking into medical records and other sensitive information stored in the hospital information system.